Chronology

1914	Born on 25 October to John Allyn Smith and Martha Shaver Smith in McAlester, Oklahoma.
1919	Birth of brother, Robert Jefferson, on 1 September.
1925	Parents relocate to Tampa, Florida. The children attend boarding school at St. Joseph’s Academy, Chickasha, Oklahoma, joining their parents in Florida at the end of the year.
1926	Death of father. Mother marries John Angus McAlpin Berryman, and family moves to New York City.
1927	Attends Public School 69, Jackson Heights, New York City.
1928	Enters South Kent School, Connecticut.
1932	Enters Columbia College.
1935	First published poems and reviews appear in The Columbia Review.
1936	Graduates from Columbia with a BA in English, minoring in Philosophy. Wins Euretta J. Kellett Scholarship to study at Clare College, Cambridge. Becomes briefly engaged to Jean Bennett.
1937	Wins Oldham Shakespeare Scholarship in Cambridge. Meets Beryl Eeman in the spring. Travels in Germany and France with Eeman. Works on a play (Cleopatra) and on poetry.
1938	On return from England in the fall, lives with family in New York City while writing and looking for work.
1939	Becomes poetry editor for The Nation. Hired as Instructor in English at Wayne University (now Wayne State), Detroit, Michigan.
1940	Becomes Instructor in English at Harvard. In November, “Twenty Poems” published by New Directions, in Five Young American Poets.
1941	Meets Eileen Mulligan.
1942	Marries Eileen Mulligan on 24 October. Publishes first collection, Poems, with New Directions.
1943	Position at Harvard not renewed. In the fall, becomes an instructor at Princeton, where he will continue to write and teach for most of the next decade.
1944	Receives Rockefeller Foundation Research Fellowship to work on Shakespeare.
1945	Short story, “The Imaginary Jew,” wins the Kenyon Review–Doubleday Doran prize.
1947	Begins the relationship that forms the basis for Berryman’s Sonnets (published in 1967).
1948	The Dispossessed published in May. Receives the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. Begins what will become “Homage to Mistress Bradstreet.”
1950	In the spring, visiting professor at the University of Washington, Seattle. Publishes Stephen Crane. Wins American Academy award (for poetry and Crane biography) and a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award.
1952	In the spring, teaches at the University of Cincinnati. Receives a Guggenheim Fellowship.
1953	Completes “Homage to Mistress Bradstreet” in the spring (published in The Partisan Review in the fall). In the summer, travels through Europe with Eileen Mulligan. They separate in the fall.
1954	Teaches the spring semester at the University of Iowa and in the summer at Harvard. Returns to Iowa in the fall but is dismissed. Moves to Minnesota with assistance from Allen Tate.
1955	In the early spring, begins work as a lecturer in the Humanities Department at the University of Minnesota. Begins writing Dream Songs.
1956	Homage to Mistress Bradstreet published in October and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. After divorce from Eileen Mulligan finalized, marries Elizabeth Ann Levine.
1957	Son Paul born on 5 March. Awarded Harriet Monroe Poetry Prize, University of Chicago. Becomes Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Minnesota. Travels to Japan and India as part of a tour sponsored by the United States Information Service. Spends late fall with Ann Levine and Paul in Italy and Spain.
1958	Separates from Ann Levine. His Thought Made Pockets & The Plane Buckt published in December.
1959	Divorced from Ann Levine in April. Homage to Mistress Bradstreet and Other Poems published in England by Faber and Faber. In the summer, teaches briefly at the University of Utah.
1960	Publishes The Arts of Reading, with Ralph Ross and Allen Tate. In the spring semester, teaches in the Department of Speech, University of California, Berkeley.
1961	Meets Kathleen (“Kate”) Donahue. In the summer, teaches at the School of Letters, Indiana University. Marries Kathleen Donahue in September.
1962	In the summer, teaches at Bread Loaf School of English, Vermont. Visiting professor at Brown for the 1962–1963 academic year. Daughter Martha born on 2 December.
1963	Receives award from Ingram Merrill Foundation.
1964	77 Dream Songs published in April; receives Russell Loines Award.
1965	Wins the Pulitzer Prize for 77 Dream Songs.
1966	Lives with family in Dublin on a Guggenheim Fellowship, from fall 1966 until spring 1967.
1967	Receives awards from the Academy of American Poets and the National Endowment for the Arts. Publishes Berryman’s Sonnets in April and Short Poems in December.
1968	His Toy, His Dream, His Rest published in October.
1969	Wins National Book Award and Bollingen Prize for His Toy, His Dream, His Rest. The Dream Songs, bringing together 77 Dream Songs and His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, published in December.
1970	Briefly visits Mexico in August. Love & Fame published in December.
1971	Daughter Sarah Rebecca born 13 June. Revised edition of Love & Fame published in November.
1972	Dies by suicide on 7 January. Delusions, Etc. published in April. Selected Poems 1938–1968 published in May in England.
1973	Recovery, an unfinished novel, with a foreword by Saul Bellow.
1976	The Freedom of the Poet, a collection of prose with a preface by Robert Giroux.
1977	Henry’s Fate & Other Poems, 1967–1972, edited by John Haffenden.
1988	We Dream of Honour: John Berryman’s Letters to His Mother, edited by Richard J. Kelly.
1989	Collected Poems, 1937–1971, edited by Charles Thornbury.
1999	Berryman’s Shakespeare: Essays, Letters and Other Writings, edited by John Haffenden.
2004	Selected Poems: John Berryman, edited by Kevin Young, published by the Library of America. Poems selected by Michael Hofmann published by Faber and Faber as part of the Poet to Poet Series.
2014	Farrar, Straus and Giroux mark JB’s centennial by publishing The Heart is Strange: New Selected Poems, edited by Daniel Swift, and reissues of The Dream Songs, Berryman’s Sonnets, and 77 Dream Songs, introduced by Michael Hofmann, April Bernard, and Henri Cole, respectively.